A California spinal injury survivor speaks out on Medicaid funding cuts | Opinion

I opened my eyes and stared up at a ceiling. I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t move. I tried to move my arms and then my legs, but nothing responded.

Panic took over.

Then, I saw my family. They surrounded me, their faces caught in that terrible space between joy and devastation. They told me that my neck was broken.

The accident and the aftermath

It was 2004. I was 22 years old, driving down Lerdo Highway in Shafter, when I fell asleep at the wheel. My truck flipped end over end — 11 times — tearing through four trees.

Two of my cervical nerves were fractured, and a portion of my cervical spine had completely shattered. I was paralyzed from the neck down. To stabilize my neck, surgeons implanted a donor vertebra (bone from someone who had passed away). My head was locked in place by a halo brace — bolts screwed into my skull to hold everything still. I couldn’t lift my arms or wiggle my fingers.

It’s hard to describe what that moment is like — when your entire life splits into before and after. When your body no longer listens to you. In those first days, I didn’t know if I’d ever walk or be independent again. I just knew everything had changed.

Through months of agonizing physical therapy, I slowly regained some function. I can now walk with assistance. I live with quadriparesis, which weakens all four limbs. I used to be left-handed, but my left hand no longer works. So I taught myself to write with my right. The journey has been brutal, but I’ve never stopped fighting.

Before the accident, I worked as a petroleum transport dispatcher, managing fuel deliveries across the region. After nearly 15 months of recovery, I rejoined the workforce, returning to the field I had just begun to build a career in before the accident. I took pride in that work. But as time went on, my condition worsened. I had chronic pain, muscle spasms and limited mobility. Eventually, I could no longer physically tolerate the job and had to go on disability.

I enrolled at California State University, Bakersfield, pursuing a double major in mathematics and studio art. My dream is to become a high school math teacher — a job I can physically manage and one where I can give back by helping students see the beauty that connects numbers and creativity.

But that dream only exists because of Medicaid.

Medicaid saved my life

Medicaid makes it possible for me to manage my pain with injections, access the medications that help control my muscle spasms and see the specialists who keep me functioning. I have to monitor my kidneys, which are vulnerable due to my spinal cord injury.

I live with hundreds — sometimes thousands — of involuntary muscle spasms every single day. Most are annoying. But when they flare, they’re agonizing. I’ve spent days, or sometimes weeks, bedridden. I’ve been rushed to the hospital in an ambulance more than once because the pain was so severe I couldn’t move.

Without Medicaid, I don’t know how I’d survive, let alone attend college, pursue my degree or build a future. I live on a fixed income. There is simply no room in my budget for the medications, hospital bills or emergency care that Medicaid currently covers. Without it, I would be trapped — physically, financially and emotionally.

The case for protecting Medicaid

Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security are not handouts. They are systems we contribute to — investments we make in one another so that when hardship strikes, we don’t fall through the cracks.

I’ve been paying into those systems since I was 10 years old. I started working on my family’s cotton farm in Buttonwillow, a small town west of Bakersfield, when I was just 8. By 10, I was officially on the payroll, working summers, winters and spring breaks, earning a real paycheck and paying real taxes into Social Security and Medicare.

And I didn’t grow up working alone: I worked side by side with some of the most decent, hardworking people I’ve ever known — mostly immigrants from a small town in Michoacán, Mexico. They weren’t just co-workers, they were family.

Many of them came to this country undocumented, but they worked tirelessly to earn legal status — some with help from my father. For others, the process took decades. Despite being undocumented, they paid taxes, including into Social Security and Medicare, even though they weren’t eligible to receive those benefits. They did it because it was the right thing to do. Because they believed in America and the promise that hard work would lead to something better.

Medicaid on the chopping block

Right now, congressional representatives like my own, Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, are pushing for cuts to Medicaid. Valadao says he supports Medicaid, but he voted for a budget resolution that would cut Medicaid by at least $625 billion over 10 years. Those cuts would devastate California’s 15 million Medicaid recipients.

If these cuts become real, millions of Americans like me will lose care.

I am not disposable. Neither are the immigrants who helped raise me.

We are told to work hard, pay our dues and contribute to society. I did that, and I still do. When we pay into Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, Americans make a promise to each other: When you fall, we will help you up.

Now that I’ve fallen, representatives like Valadao want to pull the ladder out from under me while I’m still climbing. We cannot let that happen.

This story was originally published May 22, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "A California spinal injury survivor speaks out on Medicaid funding cuts | Opinion."